Rachel McCormack arrived in Europe last November to research international schools catering to English-speaking students, but her plans were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the continent’s refugee crisis. Now, she’s spearheading a campaign to deliver Arabic-language books to refugee shelters in the Netherlands.

McCormack, a professor of literacy education at Rhode Island’s Roger Williams University, says the crisis felt more real as she watched the European news. “All I was seeing were images of Syrian families walking across Europe, and wondering what’s going to happen to them,” she says. “I thought what I should really be looking at is educating myself more about what’s being done to assist them.”

She paired up with an historian of Syrian descent who’s based in Italy but was born in the Netherlands, and who is writing a book about Syria. Together they drove for 14 hours, visiting several shelters by the German-Dutch border and talking with many of the Syrian families living there.

McCormack was particularly interested in the children, and how they would adapt in their new home. “There’s nothing for the adults to do all day,” she says. “They can’t work, but every day, the children were picked up in buses to be taken to Dutch schools with local children.”

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Returning to school, particularly when it’s in a new language, is a huge adjustment for many Syrian children, McCormack says. Even knowing the appropriate grade level is difficult with older children, some of whom have been out of school for as many as four years, and most of whom have no access to their school records.

These children are facing a massive adjustment, and maintaining their birth language and culture is key to every child’s identity. According to the Intercultural Development Research Association, a positive self-concept, which stems from the maintenance of the birth language, is crucial when adapting to a new language and culture. A growing body of research shows that for integration to be successful, Europe—and the U.S.—must embrace the languages and culture of those who immigrate there.

Many of the schools Syrian children attend in the Netherlands have no experience teaching children who do not speak Dutch, and McCormack—a champion for bilingual education—sees the lack of Arabic-language support in the schools and even at home as deeply problematic. According to recent statistics, of the 29,000 Syrians who have registered with a Dutch municipality since 2014, nearly 40 percent of them are children. McCormack is concerned about how they will be integrated into Dutch society without losing their own culture and language.

She asked the parents she met whether they planned to read to their children in Arabic to ensure they maintain their native language. “But,” she says, “they all said they wanted their children to speak Dutch as quickly as possible, and that they would be only speaking Dutch with them at home.”

“They should be speaking the language of their culture and not feeling bad about doing it.”There is a wealth of research that points to the value of immigrant parents maintaining their first language at home with their children, although some educators feel it makes their jobs harder. McCormack says she hears this often back in the U.S. “People will complain that they have students in their class that only speak Spanish at home,” she says, “and I’ll say, ‘Good, that’s what they should be doing; they should be speaking the language of their culture and not feeling bad about doing it.’”

It is unlikely that the U.S. will see the surge of Syrian refugees experienced in Europe. Over the last five years, nearly 4 million refugees have fled Syria, half of them children, and according to the Refugee Processing Center, only 2,700 have come to the states. In the fall of 2015, President Obama pledged to receive 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, triggering strong political opposition claiming the move would pose a security threat. Twenty-seven governors said they would not allow Syrians into their states, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who said he would not even accept a 5-year-old orphan.

Regardless, Arabic is already the most common language of refugees in the U.S., and is the fastest-growing language in the country. According to the Refugee Processing Center, of the 11,300 refugees admitted to the U.S. this fiscal year, 4,430 speak Arabic, and the Center for Immigration Studies reports that the number of refugees and immigrants from the Middle East increased by 13 percent between 2010 and 2013.

In the United States, approaches to integrating immigrant and refugee children in the educational system focus on getting the children proficient in English as quickly as possible, often at the expense of their native language, which can result in interrupted intellectual development and a break in valuable links to family and community.

The U.S. doesn’t have an official language, but English is the declared language of more than half the states. And in political rhetoric, it is frequently assumed that speaking English is essential to the American identity. Other politicians go beyond insisting immigrants learn English and argue for cultural assimilation. Last September, the then-Republican party presidential nomination hopeful Jeb Bush (a fluent Spanish speaker) told Iowans that we should “not have a multicultural society,” and that America is “better than every other country because of the values that people share—it defines our national identity.”

In 2015 these ideas go against the freedoms that are supposed to be at the core of what it means to be ‘American.’This implication that only English-speaking Americans have values is destructive, according to A.B. Wilkinson, an assistant professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who wrote last year on The Huffington Post that “this type of prejudice threatens the cultural heritage of millions of people in the United States … Assimilation efforts have changed over the years, yet they remain colonial, oppressive, and in 2015 these ideas go against the freedoms that are supposed to be at the core of what it means to be ‘American’.”

Wilkinson went on to argue that a political push to denounce languages other than English “further pushes the misconception that immigrant families refuse to learn English.” He writes that in fact 93 percent of U.S. residents speak at least some English.

But when it comes to integrating immigrant or refugee children, speaking “some” English isn’t enough. Just being conversant in a language—and not fluent—does not prepare children to learn academically in that language, according to Jim Cummins, one of the leading experts in bilingual education, who distinguishes two types of language competences: Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (common in the home and the playground) and Cognitive Academic Linguistic Proficiency (this superficial communicative ability typical in the classroom).

The former can be developed, according to Cummins, in two to three years, but he says “this superficial communicative ability may mislead adults and teachers into thinking that the child is ready for English-only classroom placement, when in fact the child only has interpersonal fluency—but not enough academic proficiency in English.” That proficiency, he says, takes up to seven years.

That children need seven years to be academically proficient in a new language is not reflected in current educational policy in regard to English language learners, which many experts believe is moving backward. The Bilingual Education Act (BEA), Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law in 1968, completely changed how English language learners were taught in the U.S. at the time. Among other shifts in contemporary thought, it recognized that the government had a responsibility to ensure “educational policy should work to equalize academic outcomes,” as well as the need for teachers who could not only teach a second language, but who could teach all subjects in that second language to students who were not yet proficient in English.

Several amendments to the 1968 BEA were made over the years. Under the Reagan administration, for example, more focus was put on the accelerated mainstreaming into all-English education and funding for English as a second language (versus bilingual) programs was added. But it was the passing of No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2001, that marked a “180-degree reversal in language policy,” according to RethiningSchools.org. English-language learners would now be expected to attain language proficiency while at the same time meeting the same academic standards as their native-English-speaking peers.

In December 2015, President Barack Obama repealed NCLB, replacing it with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which will come into effect in 2017. ESSA allows for dual language learners to spend a year in the country before being tested at the same level as native-English speakers, but it is still, according to McCormick, entirely too focused on “learning English as quickly as possible rather than providing bilingual education, which is a more effective approach.”

In an interview with Medill Reports Chicago, Firas Jawish, a Syrian refugee who settled in Chicago in 2014, said finding an appropriate school for his 3-year-old son has been a great worry. “We don’t want him to go to a play school,” he says, because they don’t want him to stop speaking Arabic. Jawish was concerned that learning English and Spanish in school and speaking Arabic at home would be too confusing for his son, and that the result would be the loss of Arabic.

His concerns are not unfounded. The younger an immigrant child is immersed in English, the more likely they are to lose the mother tongue, according to Claudio Toppelberg and Brian Collins, authors of a 2012 report on the mental health of immigrant children in the U.S. This is important, they say, because “the development of children’s home language may associate with strengthening of family cohesion and intimacy, parental authority and transmission of cultural norms, all of which can lead to a healthy adjustment and a strong identification and internalization of the social values of the family.”

“The experience of assimilating differs from integrating because it implies losing one’s identity.”According to a 2013 report by then masters candidate Rebecca Nathanson, the distinction between assimilation and integration is significant. “‘Assimilation’ and ‘integration’ are controversial but distinct terms,” she writes. “[…] the experience of assimilating differs from integrating because it implies losing one’s identity, which risks becoming absorb[ed] in the system. Integration, on the other [hand], makes room for a person’s individual cultural values, practices, and identity.” According to Nathanson, “integration is the preferred experience since it acknowledges the mutual relationship and impacts that refugees, immigrants, and individuals in the host culture have on each other.”

There is some subtle evidence to support a growing openness to this “mutual relationship.” Professional-development tools exist to support teachers of ELL students with Arabic as a first language, to help teachers understand different customs relating to communication, as well as explanations for why these children make certain mistakes when transitioning to English. And in 2014, the The Modern Language Association (MLA) reported that Arabic had become the fastest growing foreign language in the U.S.

And many school districts are embracing bilingual education. New York City Public Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina plans to open 38 bilingual programs at city schools starting in September, 2016, including, according to theNew York Daily News, 29 new dual-language programs that will include classes taught in Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Arabic, Polish, and Spanish—with English used on alternating days.

Back in Europe, McCormack hopes her Books For Refugees initiative will help Arabic-language refugees maintain their language and culture while making their way in a new country, and says it’s mind-blowing how quickly it’s taken off, how many donations she is receiving with which to buy books and ship them to refugee centers in the Netherlands.

“What I want to do is so simple,” she says. “Even if I just get the message out there: that many of these children, some of whom haven’t been in school for a while now, have parents that probably aren’t even thinking about reading to them in Arabic. They think: we’re going to get to Holland and learn Dutch and English and forget all about Arabic. And they shouldn’t do that.”

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Congressional Republicans and conservative pundits had the chance to signal Trump his attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable—but they sent the opposite message.

President Trump raged at his TV on Sunday morning. And yet on balance, he had a pretty good weekend. He got a measure of revenge upon the hated FBI, firing former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe two days before his pension vested. He successfully coerced his balky attorney general, Jeff Sessions, into speeding up the FBI’s processes to enable the firing before McCabe’s retirement date.

Beyond this vindictive fun for the president, he achieved something politically important. The Trump administration is offering a not very convincing story about the McCabe firing. It is insisting that the decision was taken internally by the Department of Justice, and that the president’s repeated and emphatic demands—public and private—had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop which includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

Much more than time separates the 27th president from the 45th: from their vastly different views on economics, to their conceptions of the presidency itself.

As Donald Trump’s executive orders punishing steel and aluminum imports threaten a trade war around the globe, Republicans on Capitol Hill are debating whether to reassert Congress’s ultimate constitutional authority over tariffs and trade. This isn’t the first time the GOP has split itself in two on the question of protective tariffs. But the last time, just over 100 years ago, the Republican president’s policies were the exact opposite of Trump’s.

William Howard Taft—in his opposition to populism and protectionism, as well as his devotion to constitutional limits on the powers of the presidency—was essentially the anti-Trump. Unlike the current president, and his own predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft refused to rule by executive order, insisting that the chief executive could only exercise those powers that the Constitution explicitly authorizes.

Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

The debate around sexual-harassment legislation is playing out in the Maryland General Assembly, where reform advocates say leadership is loath to embrace changes.

In Maryland, legislative sessions run 90 days, from January through early April. On the final day of each session—commonly referred to by the Latin term sine die—the capital city of Annapolis lets its hair down. There is dining and dancing and parties galore as aides, lawmakers, and lobbyists celebrate having survived the season.

A few years back, at one sine die soiree hosted by a legislator, a former Annapolis aide (who requested anonymity because she remains involved in Maryland politics) took to the dance floor. “I was dancing a little bit by myself,” she recalled. “All of a sudden I hear, ‘You’re packing a little bit more than I thought back here!’ I turn around, and this legislator is dancing right behind me. I was like, ‘Ooookay. This is a little weird. I know your wife and kids.’ So I tried to subtly move away.” The legislator followed, recalled the ex-aide. And then: “He got aroused.” The young woman made a swift escape, and, she informed me, “I have not spoken to that legislator one-on-one since.”

Scholars have been sounding the alarm about data-harvesting firms for nearly a decade. The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it may be too late to stop them.

On Friday night, Facebook suspended the account of Cambridge Analytica, the political-data company backed by the billionaire Robert Mercer that consulted on both the Brexit and Trump campaigns.

The action came just before The Guardian and The New York Timesdropped major reports in which the whistle-blower Christopher Wylie alleged that Cambridge Analytica had used data that an academic had allegedly improperly exfiltrated from the social network. These new stories, backed by Wylie’s account and internal documents, followed years of reporting by The Guardianand The Intercept about the possible problem.

The details could seem Byzantine. Aleksandr Kogan, then a Cambridge academic, founded a company, Global Science Research, and immediately took on a major client, Strategic Communication Laboratories, which eventually gave birth to Cambridge Analytica. (Steve Bannon, an adviser to the company and a former senior adviser to Trump, reportedly picked the name.)

Although the former secretary of state’s contentious relationship with the president didn’t help matters, Tillerson’s management style left a department in disarray.

Rex Tillerson is hardly the first person to be targeted in a tweet from Donald Trump, but on Tuesday morning, he became the first Cabinet official to be fired by one. It was an ignominious end to Tillerson’s 13-month stint as secretary of state, a tenure that would have been undistinguished if it weren’t so entirely destructive.

Compared with expectations for other members of Trump’s Cabinet, the disastrous results of Tillerson’s time in office are somewhat surprising. Unlike the EPA’s Scott Pruitt, Tillerson did not have obvious antipathy for the department he headed; unlike HUD’s Ben Carson, he had professional experience that was relevant to the job; and unlike Education’s Betsy DeVos, his confirmation hearing wasn't a disaster.